Live from Southern California, this is the Jim Rome show.

How about here?

Remember yesterday when I said that having the MLB season start halfway around the world

two weeks before everybody else was frankly goofy as hell.

But remember I also mentioned that it actually worked pretty well for Major League Baseball?

Well, check out the Japanese television rating from the first game of the Tokyo series

and then tell me I'm wrong.

Go ahead. Go ahead. Look at these numbers

and try to tell me that it's a bad thing for baseball. Did 25 million people watch that game

yesterday in Japan? 25 mil. 25 mil in a country whose total population is only 125 mil.

I'll do the math.

You do the Alfredo.

But the simple math tells me, one in five...

I'm doing the Alfredo.

Thank you, Avi.

One in five Japanese men, women, and children were watching that game live.

20% of the total Japanese population tuned in to the Dodgers and Cubs in March.

It's not the World Series now.

Dodgers, Cubs in March.

25 mil. 20%. Is that any good? 25 million. That's a bigger

audience than any of the World Series games drew in the U.S. last year. Are you hearing what I'm saying?

That's a bigger audience than the peak audience at any point of the Ionic fall classic between the Yankees and the Dodgers.

...